Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The FDA recognized, 35 years ago, that feeding animals low-doses of certain antibiotics used in human medicine — namely, penicillin and tetracyclines — could promote antibiotic-resistant bacteria capable of infecting people who eat meat, and proposed to withdraw approval for the use of those antibiotics in animal feed. Instead of acting upon the proposal, the FDA has now withdrawn it. Although admitting that it continues to have 'concerns' about the safety of the use of antibiotics in animal feed, the FDA says that it will just continue to rely on 'voluntary self-policing' by the industry, the same method which hasn't worked out too well during the past 35 years, as antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance have continued to rise throughout the entire period."

There is no 'Government'. There are many groups with different goals and responsibilities that are part of the government.

Except for the common goals shared by most employed people as a result of simple human nature of making their jobs pay more, be more important, grow their little corner in size so as to employ more and more people, and increase their power so as to make their jobs easier as well as harder to eliminate and also to make the previously-mentioned goals easier to accomplish.

Seeing that these goals are pretty universal to all employed people, many wouldn't think them a problem...except for the fact that they work

You might as well start calling them the "Ministry of Food and Drugs", because that's what they are. They have been working exclusively for Big Pharma and Big Ag for many years now, and try to hide that by claiming everything they do is for "consumer protection". That couldn't be further from the truth.

There is a long list of abuses by the FDA the illustrate this point. Raids of farming co-opts, seizures of organic and raw milk farmers, banning of agricultural products that compete with pharmaceuticals (

No, the "Problem" is that they've spent 30 years paying attention to the results of scientific inquiry into the issue and have decided that the recommendations were overly cautious, and decided to base their decision on the science and not on fear mongering. I don't particularly beleive that is a problem, but if you buy into the fear or the conspiracy of it all then I could see why you would.

Yet another consequence to greed. View the documentary 'Food Inc.', they show how the food industry have become afraid of the public opinion by creating laws against criticizing food producers and totally dedicated to generate more profit by lowering quality standards and so on..

I've tried watching Food, Inc. at the behest of my wife. I didn't get more than 10 minutes into it before I turned it off in disgust. It is full of half-truths, lies, unfounded claims, and willful misrepresentations. Just because it is a documentary, doesn't mean it is true. Documentary film makers are not simply regurgitating reality back t you. Before they ever shoot a single frame of video they decide what story they want to tell (which is how they get financial backers if not independetly wealthy).

This is not true. There is nothing inherently superior nutritionally in eating meat. Eating low quality meat scraps, such as hamburger and highly processed meats, is demonstrably worse.
Beans are a high quality source of protein, but not complete. However, combined with the protein found in grains, together they provide complete protein. Cultures all around the world have figured out how to get complete protein with available products.

Oh great, another propaganda point that somehow supersedes a 3 centuries of research (keeping soldiers alive on the high seas was an intense focus of research with lots of fuckups... and you know what they already knew 3 centuries ago ? No matter what the fuckup, raw meat can fix it. Cooked/baked meat and fish (raw or cooked) can fix the large majority of fuckups with a few notable exceptions).

People (mostly small children though) die from not eating meatIf you die from too much meat, it'll be at 50 at the earliest.

And yes with a massively varied diet of plants you can avoid the need to eat meat almost completely. Not quite completely, but almost. To the point that your body can survive for maybe 2 decades without meat. This requires constant nutritional supplements (usually made from fish, so there's barely any nutricional supplements that qualify as vegetarian) and medical monitoring. It is a very difficult exercise, that's basically impossible in all but the most developed countries. You can cheat and drink milk and eat eggs, which will help a lot.

Your dietary suggestion of beans + grain is moronic. How about you eat beans and grains exclusively for 4 months, and we bet for 1000 dollars that it won't work. Of course, that's a bad bet, since either you cheat, or you die... In both cases I doubt I'll see any money. You will after all have died from the most basic of food diseases, scurvy, after 2-3 months. That would be 2-3 weeks at best if you didn't start out living in one of the most developed nations on earth.

In practice 2 weeks will cause enough symptoms to manifest themselves that the pain alone will drive you back to normalcy : after about a week on your proposed diet you will get small wounds which won't heal, usually in places like the corners of the mouth or between the fingers and toes. They won't heal. A little after that they will start to rip open merely because you move your body. A crust will form on them, time and again, but it will be unable to remain attached to your skin. These wounds will slowly grow in size. From that point on you will feel extremely bad and spend upwards of 14 hours in bed each day, you will lose interest in anything and everyting, complaining of a constant headache. And we're not even at ONE month yet. After a month you will lose the ability to breathe normally and have a constant sharp pain in your bones. Keep it up, and a few teeth will fall out, you will constantly have blood in your mouth, the result of large infected areas in your mouth, rendering you unable to eat or drink without extreme discomfort. Likewise, blood will leak from the other small wounds, which at this point won't be all that small anymore. After this, random internal bleeding will start occuring, making you look like a person who's gone 10 rounds against Mike Tyson, unsuccessfully. From this point on, if you're unlucky, it takes a few weeks for you to die. You will die from total loss of internal body cohesion : blood will literally leak everywhere, and at the autopsy if they break your skin without taking the pressure of first, it will gusher out.

Any other dietary suggestions ? Hint : best include the most basic of additives, vitamin C. It would also be great if you actually noticed that plants do not contain all 9 of the essential amino acids, and so you will have to include at least two non-plant lifeforms. And please note that children have 13 essential amino acids, so their dietary requirements (in the sense that they die if they don't get it) are more extensive. There are tons of special cases where additional nutrients are required either because of genetic predisposition or simple external factors ranging from contact with salt water to lack of sunlight.

There is one substance that contains all required nutrients for a human being : meat (raw meat). With fish being a close second (likewise raw), with only a few omissions. Pulverizing the bones and adding them to the meat itself makes both meat and fish much healthier (a feature ironically only part of "low-quality" meats).

Are they absolutely required ? No. But if you don't take them... you get to puzzle everything together. Miss one piece and you will not like the result at all.

he didn't say you couldn't piece it together. just that A, it requires a very varied diet not practical for anyone but an industrialized person to achieve and B, it requires great attention to what you are getting in what you are eating that is unlikely to be practical for most people.

Not that you can't be a vegetarian for a long time. but there is a wall I've seen most vegetarians I know hit after about 10-12 years.

You are parroting something you read. You obviously have never tried this or known anyone who has. I have. None of these horrible symptoms happened to me and I didn't die in two to four weeks as you claimed.I don't know about the long term effects, as I went back to eating meat after a year. But for that year I felt fine. I lost some weight, but no scurvy, no non-healing wounds, and unless I am mistaken, no death.

(I did not take any supplements of any kind. Just vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts, grains.)

How did this trash get modded up?
There are cultures that have existed for millennium without eating meat: take a look at India.
I guess my card must be up, as i've been vegan since 1990.

The position of the ADA (and Canadian mirror agency) state: vegan diets are appropriate for people at all stages of the life cycle -- even people at crucial stages, such as growing children, pregnant or lactating women, and highly active athletes.

I know of third generation vegans (their grandparents became vegan, had

There is so much in your post that's incorrect that it's hard to know where
to start making corrections. I'll just choose a few items.

As to the idea that a vegan eschewing supplements would "[die] from the
most basic of food diseases, scurvy, after 2-3 months" -- scurvy a deficiency
of vitamin C which is abundant in certain fruits and vegetables. Someone
eating a plant-based diet would be pretty much the last person to get
scurvy.

You do realize you're giving poisonous plant as options here, right ? Yes using massive automation (not available in large parts of the world) it can be made mostly safe... but come on ! You're arguing that poisonous plants are a solution to eating healthy...

Also, taking nutricional advice from a propaganda site like that... what can possibly go wrong [google.com.au], too bad like with all these "good for nature" policies, others must suffer for your delusions.

Animals (including humans) have a requirement for amino acids, and for simplicity/convenience this is usually described as a need for protein (a product consisting almost entirely of amino acids). The relative ratio of the nutritionaly essential amino acids is important, becuase if one (or more than one) amino acid is deficient in the overall diet then the utilization of the other amino acids will be necessarily limited. This scenario usually leads to increased conversion of the amino acids that cannot be utilized for protein synthesis into lipid for storage, making the animal fatter. This fattening effect also can happen when all amino acids are present in the correct ratios, but there is too much protein consumed relative to requirement.

The key point that makes your statement wrong is that the relative ratios of amino acids in animal derived protein (including hamburger and "Meat scraps") is far closer to ideal than that in grains, including beans. Plants, including beans such as soy or lentils, are notoriously low in Lysine relative to the other amino acids. As an animal nutritionist I almost never formulate a livestock ration for a growing animal that is devoid of a concentrated Lysine supplement (usually Lysine Hydrochloride). That's not to say that you cannot satisfy a persons nutritional requirement for all essential amino acids without using meat, you most definitely can. However, it is more difficult and more expensive because you need to procure a wider variety of foods. There is also the issue of availability of nutrients, with meat derived protein being almost completely available for absorption and plant derived protein being less digestible. But of course cooking and other processing can make plant derived protein much more available.

While one source is not categorically "Better" than the other, meat is a more EFFICIENT source of amino acids. The ratios are closer to ideal, they are more available for absorption, and require less dietary variety. These qualities are not as important for most people in western society because we spend a small fraction of our total income on procuring food, and so the vegetarian/vegan diet becomes more practical as your economic status increases. In parts of the world where economics/climate/culture/etc. FORCE a primarily vegetarian diet on people, they are usually much shorter than westerners of similar ethnic background because of their poorer/less consistent access to all of the essential amino acids required for meeting their potential for maximum growth during adolescence.

Another consequence of that greed : just about every poor person in America gets meat daily, which is vastly healthier than not eating meat . Just look to your southern neighbor, Mexico, where the poor get beans on a tortilla with maybe a piece of chicken leg on sunday. The further south, the worse it gets.

It's painfully obvious as we watch those same poor Americans waddle around that we have absolutely NO right whatsoever to use the words "vastly healthier" when trying to defend anything related to our diet, including meat. Let's also not forget that we're here debating over the fact that meat isn't really meat anymore, and the artificial influences inflicted upon it really tend to question the overall benefit. This ain't your Grandpas chicken anymore.

And "vastly healthier" could be scientifically argued and proven wrong within the vegetarian community...not that you really need to when a simple visual comparison between the two groups is obvious enough.

It's not meant to be a point of criticism, but it's not meat that's making so many American's fat -- it's fructose in the diet from table sugar and just as bad high corn fructose syrup. Here's a link to a fascinating video by Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist specializing in childhood obesity, entitled "The Bitter Truth About Sugar" that covers among other topics the biochemical process that connects fructose to creation of fat cells:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM [youtube.com]. Checkout the history between the size of soda cans/bottles and the correlation to obesity rates in America.
If you just want the highlights from the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMjKEncojQ [youtube.com]
In my own personal research it's mind blowing the amount of fructose in soda vs. other food products. The amount of sugar in a low sugar whole wheat slice of bread: 1g. The amount of sugar in a 24 oz. Dr. Pepper bottle: 80g! Unholy bat guano! It's a miracle that people's pancreas don't explode from the amount of sugar consumed on a daily basis.

IMO... food has gotten significantly cheaper over the years, and people have been consuming more calories. More calories == more fat == more obesity.

But don't let that stop you from searching for that one evil ingredient that's making everyone fat. Just think, if we stop consuming fructose, we can all chow down on our daily serving of fast food without gaining a pound. McD for everyone!

No doubt you can get fat eating too much of anything, but the thing about modern Western diets is that they are highly processed. They've added high-fructose corn syrup to everything and taken nearly all the fiber out of our grains.

Eating a banana provides fiber, is more filling, and more nutritious than drinking a bottle of flavored sugar water.

If you read the links I posted as a reply to myself (CDC [cdc.gov])... over the past 30 years, calorie intake has increased by 335 calories/day for women and 168 calories a day for men. That's 2lbs/month.

People are fat because they eat too much. Sorry it's not more complicated than that.

In the parents second video link, he says fructose is a poison. That's ridiculous.

I watched the whole video, the 1.5 hour one on the first link, and he goes through how it's treated metabolically by the body, and in particular the liver, and he compares it to alcohol. If what he says is true, he makes a reasonable case. It's not the kind of poison that is going to kill you in one shot, but over time it does have harmful effects and can cause chronic illness.

I wouldn't write this guy off so quickly. In particular, the amount of sugar that's being dumped into our foods has been on a steady

There's a reason as stated in Lustig's presentation about why eating fruits as a source of sugar is NOT bad -- it's because the fruits don't just contain fructose, they also contain fiber, a substance which among other things inhibits the absorption of fructose through the intestines, unlike the sugar/fructose that's put into candy, salad dressings, junk food in general and soda which have NO FIBER. That's something you would have picked up *HAD YOU WATCHED EITHER VIDEO*.
If it makes you feel any better,

congrats on the weight loss. About 6-7 years ago I cut nearly all of the junk food, lost 45 lbs. It's surprisingly difficult to gain weight without junk. 1 pint of ice cream == 10 apples or 30 tomatoes or 25 cucumbers or 1-1.5 loaves of bread or ~2.5 steaks (8oz).

I couldn't have said it better. It's pure calorie content, and indeed it's too high in America.

But even there, comparing the consequences of too high versus too low, you'll be going for the "too high" category if you have any sense. Of course, that doesn't quite justify taking in 3x your requirements...

Still it's better to overfeed the poor (and everybody else) than to starve them. As anyone outside of America knows...

Your "simple visual comparison" needs to also take into account the US subsidizes corn growers, meaning they grow more corn than we need, and then convert the corn into sugars in a very toxic process that produces High Fructose Corn Syrup, or HFCS. [wikipedia.org]

The US puts this in most everything; almost every popular soda contains HFCS instead of sugar, because the subsidies make the cost of HFCS lower even though it requires more processing (expense) than sugar actually does -- as is evidenced by other countries, whic

Why all the complications? Drink water. You need it. It's free. It's all you need to drink. That alone will cut out 80% of the "bad" you are ingesting.Even fruit juice is not good for you, and forget about any kind of soda.

In researching the link for the above, I recalled that Coca Cola makes a yellow-topped 2-liter during Passover; I bought a few of these last year, and thought they should sell it year-round. I also found a wiki page for OpenCola, [wikipedia.org] which had Cory Doctorow involved. 1.0 was 2001-01-27; it's up to 1.1.3 now. I think I'll see if I can find this drink somewhere nearby; if not, I'll order some. Thanks, geekmux, for helping to bring this to my attention.

Yes, it's called the export market, and that popular whipping boy is becoming less relevant as more and more corn is used for ethanol production instead of being sold for export. What exactly is wrong with selling corn to other countries that can't grow it, like South Korea?

...and then convert the corn into sugars in a very toxic process that produces High Fructose Corn Syrup

The sugar is already there in the form of starch (long chains of SUGAR molecules). they are not converting corn to sugar, but extracting sugar from corn, an important distiction. Also, what part of corn refining is supposed to be to

What exactly is wrong with selling corn to other countries that can't grow it, like South Korea?

A couple reasons: first, why does their population need corn if it cannot be grown locally? Seems like they would have some other similar vegetable growing locally; selling them our corn seems wasteful in terms of delivery charges. Second, it seems to be making their population dependent on one of our resources. While that might be a good strategy for the producer, it's not so good for the consumer.

You do realize that corn is subsidized for reason completely independent of HFCS production, right?

One issue with subsidies is that during surplus years, we try to find other things to do with it -- like HF

And "vastly healthier" could be scientifically argued and proven wrong within the vegetarian community...not that you really need to when a simple visual comparison between the two groups is obvious enough.

And "vastly healthier" could be scientifically argued and proven wrong within the vegetarian community...not that you really need to when a simple visual comparison between the two groups is obvious enough.

Let's not split hairs here. Obesity is caused by overeating, regardless of what you eat. But the average carnivorous American who could give two shits about the crap they put into their body vs. a vegetarian or vegan, which most(all?) are usually very sensitive as to what goes into their bodies is certainly NOT equal by any stretch of the imagination.

And oddly enough, the latter study you cited came to the same conclusion, so I'm not exactly sure what you were trying to prove there.

As a veterinarian this is finality a topic on Slashdot I am qualified to talk about. However, rather than get into the details I am going to punt this one:)

Here is a four-part series on the struggle over the use of antibiotics in the livestock industry, the threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and the veterinary profession’s role in safeguarding animal and public health.

For one thing, the FDA has almost no authority in many of their jurisdictions; they can recommend things, but in most cases have no power to change policy or punish reckless companies. This is especially true with meat and produce. Do some googling about dirty slaughterhouses and meat packing plants and you'll find accounts of the FDA actually pleading with meat packers and state health districts to stop distributing meat from plants that had floors, walls, and packing equipment test positive for wide varieties of serious food-borne pathogens. The same goes for packing plants that had open holes in the walls and ceilings, or rodents literally scurrying underfoot on the packing line. The FDA had absolutely no authority to mandate closure of those plants, and still doesn't as far as I know.

They shouldn't have withdrawn their recommendation against antibiotics in feed (saying the right thing is never wrong in science), but that recommendation never affected policy in the first place; it's total bullshit to imply, quite strongly, that the FDA just doesn't care anymore and thinks it's totally fine for meat producers to inspect themselves.

They don't think it's fine; they fucking hate it. At least the scientists do, and the field inspectors do. The FDA does have a lot of senior management who, by many internal accounts, dedicate themselves solely to rubber-stamping industry proposals - and harassing any pissant scientist who objects. If this new policy is half as blase or half as scientifically ignorant as the linked article implies, and indeed came about to dodge a lawsuit, you can bet it came from some ass-covering prick at the top who doesn't represent the viewpoints of even 10% of the FDA staff.

So ultimately, the FDA doesn't have the mandate, the funding, or the legal prerogative to do even one-tenth as much as the scientists and lower-management would like - and which organizations like the NRDC expect them to do. The politically appointed senior management pull bullshit like this, and people like the NRDC and the submitter use corruption at the highest levels to denigrate a lot of dedicated, well-meaning scientists by calling the whole organization a bunch of lazy sociopaths.

If you want safe food and better drug testing then don't piss on the FDA: you should bitch at Congress about the fucking pro-corporate morons they appoint to lead the FDA, and about the shitty laws and budgets that leave the FDA with not even half the money and authority they need to do the job we expect of them.

Uh, I think you misunderstood my comment. I'm suggesting that someone at the FDA is getting attention focused on antibiotic use before there is a food disaster (caused by antibiotics) by withdrawing their recommendation. It's already gotten people on Slashdot worked up.

Following your google search, I read the first three articles referencing food-related shutdowns. Every one, even the ones entitled "FDA shuts down" or claiming that the FDA "ordered" someone to stop production, ultimately acknowledged that the company "agreed" to cease production and signed a "consent decree" with the FDA.

So it's still exactly as I read in Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan books: the FDA finds violations and they have to whine, beg, and invoke publicity campaigns to get dirty producers to shut down or improve conditions. They still can't force anyone to do anything most of the time.

So anyway, thanks for playing, and judging by your second paragraph it's time for your thorazine, so please follow the nice nurse to your bedroom and she'll give you a nice gentle prick in the ass. Right where your opinions and your research come from.

Following your google search, I read the first three articles referencing food-related shutdowns. Every one, even the ones entitled "FDA shuts down" or claiming that the FDA "ordered" someone to stop production, ultimately acknowledged that the company "agreed" to cease production and signed a "consent decree" with the FDA.

Why would they agree to cease production just because they were asked? You have to be a total idiot to believe that they shut down because they were asked nicely. They were threatened with various and sundry and they caved in. To assume anything else is to be a total moron. So anyway, thanks for playing, but we still live in a capitalist system where people choose to make money until someone stops them.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is requesting a budget of $4.3 billion to protect and promote the public health as part of the President’s fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget — a 33 percent increase over the FDA enacted budget for FY 2010. The FY 2012 request covers the period of Oct. 1, 2011, through Sept. 30, 2012.

“FDA protects and promotes the health of all Americans through every stage of life,” said Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., commissioner of food and drugs. “The breadth of this mandate means that FDA responsibilities continue to grow. The new budget contains new resources so that FDA can fulfill its growing responsibilities to the American public.” http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm243354.htm [fda.gov]

It is a supreme falsehood that a government's responsibilities and resources must grow. Bureaucracies like the FDA may be immune to democracy, but the politicians who seek to grow them are not.

It is a supreme falsehood that a government's responsibilities and resources must grow. Bureaucracies like the FDA may be immune to democracy, but the politicians who seek to grow them are not.

So therefore any and all attempts at increasing government spending represent greedy politicians squeezing more cash out of the populace?

Even the most hardcore libertarians I know believe the government has taxation authority for transportation infrastructure, weights & measures enforcement, and a military - including growing those things when needed. But not you, you saw through even those bullshit arguments! Guess the next time I-90 buckles or a new town with 2 million people thinks that *maybe* it

So therefore any and all attempts at increasing government spending represent greedy politicians squeezing more cash out of the populace?
Even the most hardcore libertarians I know believe the government has taxation authority for transportation infrastructure, weights & measures enforcement, and a military - including growing those things when needed. But not you, you saw through even those bullshit arguments! Guess the next time I-90 buckles or a new town with 2 million people thinks that *maybe* it's time they got a freeway we'll have to point out that: "No! Lee Greatrex opened our eyes and we know that government spending shalt never grow!".

the FDA says that it will just continue to rely on 'voluntary self-policing' by the industry, the same method which hasn't worked out too well during the past 35 years

What idiot thinks that "voluntary self-policing" works in any for-profit business? There are two fundamental problems with that plan: (1) businesses will only "volunteer" to do what benefits them, not the public, and (2) many businesses are surprisingly short-sighted and will only "volunteer" to do things that help their industry or their bu

What idiot thinks that "voluntary self-policing" works in any for-profit business? There are two fundamental problems with that plan: (1) businesses will only "volunteer" to do what benefits them, not the public, and (2) many businesses are surprisingly short-sighted and will only "volunteer" to do things that help their industry or their business in the short-term.

My guess is that no one actually believes it. It's just that the FDA are, as another Slashdotter so eloquently put it, "corporate bitches". It is a real threat to our health and safety, and to our democracy itself, that the foxes have been put in charge of the henhouses. It is so intrinsically corrupt that the people who run these agencies were employed by, and upon their retirement from public "service", will be employed by, the agencies they are supposed to be regulating. It is a national disgrace. The Un

On the other hand, public discomfort with antibiotics has, in the last few years, created a market (albeit small) for organic meat. While it isn't available everywhere, many people do have a choice to "opt out" regardless of the FDA's lack of action.

A lot of good this is going to do considering that the whole point of the study was, antibiotics-resistant bacteria development is caused by prevalence of antibiotics-treated meat. Eating meat without antibiotics has absolutely no effect on the person until everyone else (or almost everyone else) does the same.

There's obviously bribery going on to interfere with this public health program. Either directly in cash or other things of value, or just the promise of career escalation after leaving the FDA to work for the meat industry and its support services.

If our news media weren't even more corrupt there'd be a news story about the bribery. Reporters have had 35 years to cover it.

People who worry about antibiotic resistances shouldn't worry just about meat that has this. They need to worry about Triclosan and the family of antibacterials that are used in plastics and handwash formulas as well. There's no shortage of studies out that show using it promotes bacterial resistance to all antibiotics.

If you're that damn paranoid about germs, use 80-100% rubbing alcohol, or a iodine based antiseptic.

Widespread meat-eating just makes it less able to support them, though - the feedstuffs for the animals has to come from somewhere, meaning that they get farmed and have fertilizer and pesticides dumped on them, and a lot of the energy in those feedstuffs is wasted making meat a very inefficient source of food.

Actually you couldn't be more wrong, the planet can't even support the CURRENT population without modern agricultural techniques, never mind FUTURE population growth. Add in the fact that much of the world is currently subsisting on inadequate or barely adequate nutrition as it is, and your statement becomes even more ridiculous. One effect of globalization has been to increase the quality of life in former 3rd world nations. China and India come to mind as rapidly developing nations with HUGE population

Meat gets antibiotics. Vegetables get synthetic fertilizer. No food source can feed the planet without modern agriculture techniques.

Considering mankind has survived without antibiotics and synthetic fertilizers for thousands of years, this is a rather distorted view, and is debatable given the greed and corruption behind the corporations that tell us we "need" these things in our food.

For how many thousands of years have there been greater than one billion people on the planet? How do you expect to get the yields to feed that many people without modern agriculture techniques?

It's not greedy corporations that "tell us we 'need' these things in our food". You can go start a farm or garden today, refuse to use these products, and see how your yields turn out. People who grow organically today compete on quality for a reason, they can't get the yields factory farming does.

I was gonna say, 'Yeah, it can, they did it for millenia', but then I reread what you said. Feeding 7 billion people isn't easy. Even harder is dealing with warlords who play games with the distribution.

I've been told we have 5 times as much food on hand at any given time to feed everybody, the problem is in the distribution networks. When they get politicised, problems happen. Just look at central Africa.

Yes. Vegetables get Fertilizer and Cows get the protein food. Yes, Vegetables need pesticides, and i hope that we also prevent insects dangerous to the cows from crawling around the cows.

However, if the cow is always close to getting a bacterial infection prevented by antibiotics then you have done something as wrong as if vegetables would rot in to moist ground and your solution to this would not be to regulate the amount of water but to hope to kill the bacteria in some other way.

http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=85455 [freshplaza.com]
Many other growers use antibiotics on fruits and vegetables. In fact, antibiotic resistance likely comes more from excessive use in ranching and agriculture rather than direct use in humans IMHO.

Other than the summary - is there any reference that this promotes 'bacteria capable of infecting people who eat meat'? Or does it promote bacteria with resistance to the antibiotics in use that can affect everyone?

As I understand it this is how it works, they give cows and pigs antibiotics in low doses so they won't get sick in the crowded feeding yards. There is not a problem with the bacteria in cows and pigs being resistant because properly handling and cooking the meat will kill the bacteria, and sick animals are treated before they are slaughtered. However the antibiotics are still in the cows and pigs and are passed on to the consumer, at those low doses bacteria will not be completely eliminated and can become resistant to them. Once the person is sick they will spread the more resistant bacteria to anyone they come in contact with. So it's not a problem that the vegetarians are immune too, vegetarians can't make the bacteria any stronger, but still can get the illness.

The give an extremely small amount of antibiotics. something like 1/100 th of a dose. 90% of which is peed out. This kills bugs in the animals gut. Then the animal absorbs more food.There is NO TRACE in any meat when processed.

When an animal is sick, it is isolated, given proper doses, and has to be without antibiotics. If memory serves, 3 months isolation.Isolation may also mean several animals who might be sick.

The withdrawal period is unique for each antibiotic. Penicillin for example has a 7d withdrawal period in pigs. Some have shorter and many have longer periods. The animals are not isolated (as in kept separate from the healthy animals) necessarily, but instead cannot be sold for meat until the withdrawal period has expired. The same goes for milk production. If a dairy cow in mid-lactation is given an antibiotic with a 2 wk withdrawal period, for example, then all milk collected from that cow is poured

If I'm a "BUG" and you gave me a low dose -- that means MORE of me survive, right?

If it's capable of reducing some "bugs" in the gut, isn't that basically digestion - meaning, the animal doesn't digest as quickly so it stores more of the food as fat?

When humans take anti-biotics, we take mega-doses and we are supposed to take a full course -- why? Because even if we get healthy, we don't want weakened but "educated" bugs to come back and make us sick again -- thus making the antibiotic useless.

Other than the summary - is there any reference that this promotes 'bacteria capable of infecting people who eat meat'? Or does it promote bacteria with resistance to the antibiotics in use that can affect everyone?

It's the second, of course: meat-eaters aren't a unique class of person vulnerable to completely different pathogenic illnesses than those who don't eat meat.

On the other hand, animals and animal products are an excellent way of acquiring any pathogenic illness that isn't transmitted by sex or air, and they're still the number one source of novel diseases. Anthropologists have pretty well established that major plagues usually jumped directly from animals, often livestock, into humans. They didn't call i

Yes, but it isn't passed through eating, it's past from living next to each other and 'sharing' wet sources.Meaning, some disease from an animal gets on a person hand, and then they tough there nose or eyes.

I usually like NewYorkCountryLawyer, but I'm going to have to ask him for some proof for the statement "antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance have continued to rise throughout the entire period". I would offer the alternative that antibiotic use peaked, and then declined because overuse led to antibiotic resistance. Currently I believe that livestock antibiotic use is minimal, simply because frequent heavy use doesn't work well. And the livestock antibiotics is only a minor cause for the rise in antibiotic resistance. That resistance, which predates livestock use, is primarily caused by overuse in humans.

I hope you didn't stop liking me. I was relying on the knowledgeable folks at Grist for the statement that the practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock not for treating disease, but for the purposes of promoting growth and enabling the use of more dangerous living conditions, has increased. I know that the total amount was estimated at 29,000,000 pounds per year [wired.com], and that 80% of that is estimated to be for non-therapeutic uses.

Your statements about increased resistance and use of antibiotics actually m